[2] Supported by large foundations and The Huffington Post (now HuffPost), the operation established a multi-media newsroom of journalists.

[3][4][5] Penniman founded the American News Project, an early venture into online video journalism, and served as the Washington director of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, where he worked closely with broadcaster Bill Moyers.

Moyers and Penniman first met in 1999, when Penniman was running a national grassroots organization called the Alliance for Democracy, which focused primarily on campaign finance reform and the effects of economic globalization.

In 2016, Penniman and co-author Wendell Potter published Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy And What We Can Do About It.

[citation needed] His father, Nicholas G. Penniman IV, was publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a senior executive with Pulitzer, Inc.[9][10]